by S. J. Rozan
Except for a glance over his shoulder every time he goes out of the house, a clutch in his stomach every time Harry, and soon the new baby, are out of his sight. A tingle he’ll never lose, even if he forgets the reason for it, every time the phone rings for the rest of his life. Except for those, I thought, everything would be well.
“But,” Mark said, “something went wrong?”
Wei Ang-Ran nodded again. “My nephew called to tell me there had been a second ransom call, demanding a great deal of money. I called Maria Quezon on her cell phone; she did not answer. They are not at Ocean Park in the room I had reserved for them, under the name we agreed on.” He looked up at us, me and Mark. “You can see what happened. Maria Quezon is taking this opportunity to extort from my nephew a great deal of money for herself.”
If she were, I asked him silently, could you blame her? If Steven got wind of her involvement in your loony scheme, she’d be tossed out of Hong Kong before you could say amah, and that would be if he didn’t just have her arrested. The least she could do would be to go ahead and get herself a nest egg.
Only I didn’t think she had. And as crazy as this old man’s desperate scheme might be, the deep furrows in his brow and the trembling of his hands as he lifted his teacup made his fear and regret so excrutiatingly obvious that it was all I could do to watch the shadows of the mountain spine of Hong Kong Island creep across the harbor water, covering the sparkling wavelets inch by inch, and not blurt out to Wei Ang-Ran what we knew that he didn’t.
Which was, of course, that Maria Quezon, appalled by Wei Ang-Ran’s scheme, had taken Harry and run to safety on Cheung Chau Island, where Bill was with her right now.
I looked at Mark and spoke in English. “I don’t think so,” I said.
He returned my look, then stood, courteously asking Wei Ang-Ran to excuse us. Equally politely, as though he had a choice in the matter, the old man did. Mark held the glass door for me and we stepped into the hall.
“She’s not behind that second demand,” I said as soon as the door shut. “If she were, she would never have called Bill and asked to meet with him. She would have stayed lying low until the money was paid.”
Mark nodded. “I was thinking the same. What he’s saying fits in with what she said: that the boy isn’t safe, and won’t be if he’s returned to his parents. She doesn’t know what this is about. She must think it’s the real thing, that the old man’s desperate enough for money to kidnap his own nephew’s kid. So she can’t let Harry go back to where he could get a second shot at him. She must figure if she told Steven he’d never believe her. He might even toss her out for defaming the old man, and then who’d protect Harry?”
“Supposedly Steven thinks of her like family.”
“Yeah, but Wei Ang-Ran is family. In a pinch, whose story do you think would win out, his dead father’s brother’s, or the Filipina amah’s?”
“Poor Maria,” I said. So the amah did love the boy like her own son.
I was, at least, glad to hear that.
I glanced back into the conference room, watched the shadows of the mountains on the water, the shadows of unhappiness on the old man’s face. “This explains why neither ransom caller could produce evidence that they were holding Harry,” I said.
“Because neither is.”
“Right.”
“So the second caller is some opportunist who found out Harry was gone and decided he’d work the situation?”
“I think so.”
“Who?”
I said slowly, “Franklin.”
“Franklin Wei?”
“Sure. So he didn’t do the kidnapping like I thought. But the rest still fits. He gets here and Harry’s gone. He’s an impulsive guy, we know that. He calls in a two-million-American-dollar ransom demand, offers to lend Steven a million which totally diverts suspicion from him, and figures to end up with his own million back plus another one before the real kidnappers return the kid.”
“And if the kid’s returned first?”
“Then everybody can see the second demand’s bogus, but what’s Franklin lost? It was worth a shot.”
A cop on an errand hurried past us. He and Mark exchanged quick Cantonese greetings, and then everything was still again.
The thought struck me that this was exactly the kind of conversation I was used to having with Bill, when we were working out the possibilities of a case. But Bill was out on Cheung Chau with the amah, and I was here in police headquarters, talking things over, working out the possibilities, in a quiet hallway with Mark.
Mark’s eyes met mine. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, and I don’t know what he felt, either, but what he said was, “I want to ask the guy a few more questions,” and he held the conference room door for me once again.
I went in and sat down, telling myself that working on a case was just working on a case, no matter who you worked with. Mark lifted the teakettle and poured us all more tea.
Saying nothing to Wei Ang-Ran about our discussion in the hall, Mark switched back to Cantonese and asked, “Your nephew’s flat had been searched before Chin Ling Wan-Ju—” that was me “—got there. Why?” He still spoke in that mild, inquiring tone, as though none of this were very important, but he did need to fill in all the blanks, just part of the job, you understand.
“I don’t know.” Wei Ang-Ran blinked. “Maria Quezon must have arranged that.”
That didn’t make any sense to me, and it must not have to Mark either, but he didn’t follow it up. Instead he asked, “I suppose you didn’t make the ransom call yourself?”
“Of course not. Anyone in that household would have recognized my voice immediately.”
“Who did?”
This time the silence lasted almost longer than I could stand it. I fixed my eyes on the harbor again, where the dusk-softened colors made following the movements of the chugging, sailing, streaming boats harder. I got the feeling, though, that, seen or not, the harbor traffic never stopped. Far off on the horizon, to the east where the night had long since come, a large military ship had set its lights twinkling. Mark sat patiently waiting for the answer to his question, and I sat, trying to be patient, too.
And when it came, it was worth the wait.
“Iron Fist Chang,” the old man said.
Kung Fu is an interesting martial discipline. If practiced assiduously from a young age it can develop the lung capacity and muscular strength that will permit a stocky cop in his thirties to outrun a fit, athletic private eye still in her twenties. It also can convey a level of mental control that makes it possible for a practitioner to respond with nothing but slightly raised eyebrows to news that can make a student of Tae Kwon Do choke on her tea.
Kung Fu Man shot me another look—as though, trying to swallow and not make a mess, I needed it—and said patiently, “Wei Ang-Ran Sinsaang, an hour ago we sat here discussing the death of Iron Fist Chang. You assured me you knew nothing about his death, nothing about the man himself beyond the fact that when he wasn’t working for you he worked in films as a stuntman.”
“What I said was true,” Wei Ang-Ran maintained, though he didn’t even try for a tone of aggrieved innocence. “I know nothing about him. My brother hired him, on a recommendation, as I told you earlier. I know nothing, either, about his death.”
“But you had a relationship with him that may have had something to do with his death. Surely you must have thought of that when I questioned you.”
“I did. But you must see that anything I might have said would have revealed my part in this terrible situation?”
Mark let a tiny, exasperated sigh escape. It was my chance; I sneaked a question in. “Sinsaang? Who recommended Iron Fist Chang to your brother?”
Wei Ang-Ran turned to me as though I had a perfect right to be asking questions here, and Mark, though he frowned, didn’t contradict that. “I don’t know. It would not have occurred to me to ask. If my brother trusted the recommendation, I needed to know nothing more.”
Once again Mark, looking wary, stayed silent.
“I needed someone trustworthy. There was no possibility of involving any of the other young men. Two of them, as I suppose you know, are members of Strength and Harmony. They are there to look after the shipments.”
Mark and I both nodded.
“Some of the others may also be members, or they may not. But Iron Fist Chang came through my brother, recommended by someone my brother trusted.”
A good reason to involve the poor guy in kidnapping and extortion, I thought: Still, I knew what he meant.
Again casually, as though he were only trying to clear up some personal confusion, Mark asked, “But Sinsaang, if Lee Lao-Li was involved in your plan, your diversion—after all, the smuggled treasures are his—why not use a member of Strength and Harmony?”
Wei Ang-Ran stared in horror. “Lee involved? No, no! I would never have done that. It would have been far too dangerous. Oh, no, Lee knows nothing about this!”
Which was exactly what Mark had wanted to know.
“But Iron Fist Chang knew about your plan all along?” he asked.
“No, of course not. Yesterday morning, I explained the call I wanted him to make. I offered him a good deal of money. I assured him the child was in no real danger. I said … I said I felt my nephew was too lax in his attention to his family, that he took them too much for granted. Before the new child came, I told Chang, I wanted to make sure my nephew understood what treasures he had.” He slowly shook his head. “My nephew. Nothing could have been further from the truth.”
“And then you sent Chang to the temple, to make sure Steven did as he was told?” I asked.
The old man’s sad nod was more eloquent than speech.
It didn’t answer all my questions, though. I had a lot more, and it seemed as though Mark was going to give me a chance to ask them. What Franklin’s role was, and Natalie Zhu’s; what Wei Ang-Ran made of the fact that the jade we’d delivered wasn’t his brother’s. I wish, still, that I’d gotten to them, although I don’t know that anything would have changed if I had.
But I didn’t. As I was framing the next one, my cell phone proved that its battery charge was still intact, by ringing.
A small part of my brain noticed that my phone’s shrill chirp got as much of a reaction from Mark as from me, and was gratified. The rest of me was occupied by the plunge into my bag to retrieve the thing and the slapping of it onto my ear.
“Wai! I mean, hello!” I shouted. I felt a flood of hopeful relief. This must be Bill. He must be all right: What could have happened, since the danger to Harry had all been made up? The rest of this, everything else we didn’t understand, could be sorted out at leisure now that the really important part—restoring Harry to his family—was about to be taken care of.
But it wasn’t Bill.
It was a woman’s soft voice, speaking in English accented with something that wasn’t Chinese. She asked for me.
“This is Lydia Chin,” I said.
Before I could say anything else, she went on in a hurried whisper: “Your friend. I think your friend is in trouble.”
“Who is this? What do you mean, trouble?” I mashed the phone harder against my ear, as though that would help me understand.
“I am Maria Quezon. He tell me to call you. He say you know where he go and why.”
“I do.”
Mark had leaned across the table when he’d heard me say trouble. His hand stuck out, as though to grab my phone and plaster it to his own ear. I shot him a warning look and said, “What happened?”
“Your friend, we talk. He … advise me. Then he see two men. Tony, he say to tell you, and the big one. They watch us drink coffee but do not come to talk. Your friend tell me, go out the back, go away. He go talk to them. He say, if he don’t come meet me, I call you. He do not come.”
“Where are you?”
Carefully, she said, “At the harbor, along Praya Street on Cheung Chau Island, is where he see the men.”
“You didn’t see where they went?”
“No. I run away, like he say to do.”
“Where are you now?”
A pause. Then, “I cannot say.”
“Is Harry with you?”
Desperately: “You must see. Your friend, he seem like a good man, but I do not know him. I do not know you. My Harry—”
“Maria,” I said urgently. “I know what happened. I know about Harry’s great-uncle, and that you took Harry away to keep him safe. But that’s all over now; the danger is past. You can come back.”
She paused. Then, “Your friend,” she said, “he tell me to run away. These men, they frighten me. I think they frighten him, too, but he go to them, he do not run away with me. They are danger. Maybe he is danger too. I do not know you. I do not tell you where I am.” Her voice, soft as it was, was firm. I suddenly thought of my mother, turning down with calm finality the pleas of all her five children to be allowed to go play in the park if we promised to finish our homework after dinner.
And I couldn’t argue with Maria Quezon. Tony Siu and Big John Chou seemed like dangerous men to me, too. I stared across the water at the yellow lights stringing the Kowloon waterfront.
Mark reached out for the phone again, and I realized the room had gone silent. I spun away from him and said, “Maria? Maria, give me your cell phone number.”
“Your friend tell me don’t use the cell phone. He tell me, don’t use no phone more than once.”
Now it was my voice that sounded desperate. Part of me listened to it, the higher pitch, the rapid words. “Maria, I have to be able to keep in touch with you. It’s important.”
“Yes,” she finally said. “Yes. I call again.”
The phone went silent in my ear.
I slowly lowered it as Mark demanded, “Lydia? What the hell’s going on?”
“That was Maria.” I spoke in English, as he had. “Tony Siu and Big John Chou showed up on Cheung Chau. Bill kept them busy while she escaped. They were supposed to meet up, but she hasn’t seen him since.”
I heard my voice, composed, reporting, and marveled at it; I saw myself, as if from across the room, fold the phone and clip it to my belt. It was closer, there, than in my bag, for next time I needed it. I noticed Wei Ang-Ran’s puzzled look, and thought, he must be waiting for someone to explain this to him; he doesn’t speak English.
“Lydia? Lydia!” Mark’s hand hit the table. The slap rang, the table shook. “What else? Where did they go? Where’s the boy?”
Startled, I stared at him. The Kowloon lights glowed brighter and I could hear the faint hiss of the air-conditioning as it washed cool air over us from the ceiling. I shook my head hard, to clear it. Don’t go losing it, Lydia, I demanded. Not now. Not now.
I swallowed and spoke. “Harry’s with her but she won’t tell me where,” I said. “She doesn’t know where Bill and those guys are.”
“How did they know to go to Cheung Chau?”
“I don’t know.”
Mark’s eyes met and held mine. He reached out and very briefly covered my hand with his, and for that moment his large warmth made me feel brave and hopeful. He withdrew his hand and turned to Wei Ang-Ran.
“Sinsaang,” he said, in sharp and commanding Chinese, “the two members of Strength and Harmony who work for you, the ones who call themselves Tony Siu, Big John Chou”—those names he gave in English—“are on Cheung Chau Island, where Maria Quezon took your great-nephew. How did they know to go there?”
But the old man had another question. Eyes wide, he asked, “Is that where Maria Quezon is? With Hao-Han? The boy is all right?”
“We don’t know that,” Mark said. I thought that was a little cruel, but right now I didn’t care. If that’s what it took to shake Wei Ang-Ran up and get him to talk, it was fine with me. “How did these triad members know where to go?” Mark repeated.
The old man shook his head,
a slow movement. “I know nothing about them. They come to Lion Rock when the shipments come in. They take what is theirs, they leave again. I try to keep away from them. They frighten me.”
Great, I thought, a consensus.
Wei Ang-Ran’s eyes, which would not look at Mark or at me, glistened. He turned them to the window, to the gray harbor, the ships you couldn’t see. “When I started smuggling,” he said to the water, “it was the time of the Cultural Revolution. I knew what was happening in China. Everyone knew. Ancient treasures smashed in the streets, fed into bonfires while gangsters howled. Lee Lao-Li came to me. I knew him only as a dealer in fine antiquities; at that time I knew nothing about Strength and Harmony. He begged me to help save the treasures of China.”
In the harbor a headlamp on a ferry caught a sampan crossing the ferry’s prow. The sampan was for a moment visible, then, outside the lamp’s reach, vanished again.
“I knew I could not tell my brother, he would never have agreed. He was an upright, virtuous man. But he loved the ancient ways. I watched him grieve over each new report from the mainland. I thought by joining with Lee, I was doing right.” In a low voice echoing with the sadness and regret of a lifetime, he said, “This was the only important decision I ever took without my brother’s counsel. I knew, all through the years, that something bad would come of it. I am not a man of plans.”
Mark seemed about to speak, but Wei Ang-Ran went on. “At first, the smuggled treasures were few. They were small. I felt proud to have rescued them. In one shipment were three jade Buddhas, pendants to wear. They made me think of my brother. Of his jade. I could not believe I was doing wrong.
“But they grew more numerous, came more often. I began to worry. I stopped wanting to know what was in the shipments, to see them. I wished Lion Rock were not involved in this business.
